Seeing Is Believing (12 page)

“Okay,” he told Ruth quietly, “we’ll leave. I’ll make out a report tonight for Psi-Lab and fax it to their office tomorrow, saying that we came to a dead end in our search for you.”

Ruth nodded, tears springing to her eyes.

Filled with joy, Diana gasped. How badly she wanted to hug Wes, but now was not the time or place.

“Thank you for your heart, your understanding, Mr. McDonald,” the older woman said.

Elmer spoke up. “He’s an honorable warrior. He knows what you have walked through. He honors the courage of your convictions.”

Wes nodded. “Warriors get tired, too,” he agreed. “You’re not stealing government secrets, and you’re not in trouble or danger at all, so it’s an easy decision for us to make.” Looking around the cave, he noticed the small tree at the rear of the cave that Diana had described earlier. Pride moved through him as she rose and joined him, her arm sliding about his waist.

Ruth stood up and walked over to Wes, her hand extended. “May you walk in peace, too, Mr. McDonald.”

Diana smiled through the tears.

“I’m trying to, Ms. Horner.” He released her cool, slender hand.

“I’m going to miss my friends and colleagues at Psi-Lab,” she told them, her voice trembling with emotion. “I wish—I wish you could tell them that I’m all right, that I’m safe, but I know you can’t. I wish I could warn them about their fate, but I can’t even do that. I don’t even dare astral travel to any of them for fear they trace me back to where I’m living.”

“Maybe a letter written in some city you’re passing through might do the job. You could tell them you’re safe, happy,” Wes suggested gently, realizing the trauma that Ruth Horner was going through. How would he feel, cut off from his buddies still in Delta Force? He didn’t have many friends, but the ones he had, he cherished. His respect for Ruth’s courage increased.

“That’s a thought,” Ruth mumbled, wiping her eyes self-consciously with the back of her hand.

“Just be sure to mail the letter without fingerprints, so the FBI can’t trace it to you.”

She laughed a little. “Well, where I’m going to live, no one would find me, believe me.”

“Good.” Wes wasn’t about to ask where that was. If he was asked by Psi-Lab officials, he wanted to be able to answer honestly that he didn’t know. He put his hand up in a sign of farewell to them. “We’d better get going. I’ve got a Sedona police officer at the bottom of the trailhead, waiting to hear if we’ve found you.”

Diana disengaged her arm from Wes and impulsively reached out, throwing both arms around Ruth. How thin and strong she was! “May there be rainbows in your life, Ruth. Walk in peace with the Great Spirit,” she whispered before she broke the embrace.

Ruth smiled and sniffed. “Thank you, Diana.” She touched her shoulder momentarily. Lowering her voice to a bare whisper, she said, “And take care of this man of yours. His heart’s open now, and you’re so special to him….”

Smiling softly, Diana nodded. “I will, and thanks.”

“One more thing, before you leave,” Ruth said with a frown. Pinning most of her attention on Diana, she asked, “Have you ever heard of a half-blood medicine man by the name of Rogan Horsekiller?”

“No,” Diana said.

“He’s trouble,” Ruth warned darkly. “Ask your mother if she knows of him.” She glanced back at Elmer. “I swore I was done with psychic work, but Elmer was telling me of this métis medicine man who is a power stalker. He’s causing a lot of problems within the Native American community. Elmer’s worried that Horsekiller has big plans. Bad ones.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” Diana said lamely.

“Well, you will. Sooner or later. Just inform your mother so she’s prepared for the bastard.”

“I will. Thanks.”

Wes took Diana’s hand. “Come on, let’s go talk to that policeman.”

* * *

“Are you hungry?” Wes asked casually. They sat in a small vegetarian restaurant on the outskirts of Sedona. At 3:00 p.m. the place was relatively empty of customers, and the booth they sat in was at the rear, where there was less chance of being overheard.

Diana took a drink of a thick carob milkshake. She blotted off the mustache left by the shake with her paper napkin. “Would it be unseemly to admit I’m hungry for you, not food?”

Wes had the good grace to blush. “You’re a pretty brazen lady.”

“Wait until you get to know the rest of me.”

His grin broadened and he reached across the Formica table to grasp her hand. “I like a bold woman.”

“Being around you takes every ounce of my courage,” Diana admitted, nudging the milkshake in Wes’s direction. He’d been eyeing it ever since its arrival at the table.

“Thanks.” He took a few sips and sat back, watching her. “I hope Ruth is going to be happy.”

“Do you believe what she said about Psi-Lab? Putting their burned-out or retired psychics into a special government-run mental ward?” Shivering, Diana added, “It sounds horrible.”

Wes nodded. “I don’t think she’s lying. But I don’t know the whole truth of it, either. Who knows? Maybe Tony
was
mentally deranged by what he did for Psi-Lab. Maybe he wasn’t to be trusted out in the world again.” With a shrug, he added, “I get the sense that, because of the high paranoia of their work, being spies in a psychic or metaphysical sense could breed that kind of suspicion. I’ve met some pretty crazy spies who were undercover too long, too stressed-out or broken to really function normally. Maybe what Ruth saw was the government’s way of helping someone who’d been shattered by his work the best they knew how. Maybe Tony wasn’t really a prisoner.”

“But why would they have told his family he was dead?”

Wes shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think Ruth has all the answers, and I know we don’t. Like I said, the government operates in gray areas, not black-and-white ones.”

“It’s all so macabre, Wes. Frightening. Our own government!”

“Honey,” he said, putting the glass aside, “being in Delta Force taught me a lot about the quirks and foibles of our government. Things aren’t always as they seem.”

“Yes, but to imprison people for the rest of their lives just because they had burned out…”

“I know, I know.”

“Do you think the report you make out to Psi-Lab will be sufficient? Do you think they’ll send someone else to hunt Ruth down?”

“I don’t know.” Wes squeezed her fingers, longing to lean over and kiss her ripe, soft lips. “You can help me write the report. You’re the psychic. You’ll know what to say to throw those goons from Psi-Lab off her track.”

The warmth of his fingers, the way he caressed her hand, filled Diana with an undeniable need. Need for him. “I had so many questions to ask Ruth. How do they recruit their clairvoyant people? And what’s this about killing? Mother said that she’s been in some psychic battles where, if she lost, she would not have been able to go back to her physical body, and over time, she would have died.”

“That possibility right there would stop me from wanting to be a psychic,” Wes said wryly.

“Believe me, when you grow up in a psychic household like I did, you see all sides of the gift. I guess that’s why I’ve resisted becoming a medicine woman in training with my mother. My sister went her own way, and she’s a shaman, but that’s dangerous work, too. No,” Diana murmured, turning over her hands and looking at her palms, “I like being something simple, like a psychometrist.”

“Simple?” Wes teased. “There’s nothing ‘simple’ about you, honey. You’re complex and you have a lot of facets.” He kissed her fingers. “Like a diamond.”

She flushed. “Is that how you see me?”

He eased out of the booth, drew a couple of dollars from his billfold and placed them on the table. He smiled down at her. “If I told you the truth, I wonder what you’d say or do?”

Rising, Diana slid her hand into his as they exited the restaurant. “No matter what you told me, Wes, it wouldn’t scare me into leaving you, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She thought about his childhood, the fact that the one person he loved most in the world, his mother, had left him and later died. Did Wes think, because she was woman, she was capable of abandoning him, too?

The heat of the day hit them as they stepped out of the restaurant. Wes led Diana to the rental car and opened the door. He leaned down and kissed her quickly on the mouth.

“I’m glad you can’t read my mind.”

Her lips tingled, and she reached up and grazed his cheek. “Why?”

“Because,” he said lightly, holding the door for her while she got into the car, “I feel like some wretched, impoverished gold miner with you. You’re the biggest, most beautiful gold nugget I’ve ever seen, and now I’m feeling greedy—like I want to keep you to myself forever. I’m afraid if I let you out of my sight, you’ll disappear like a dream I’ve been dreaming all my life.”

Touched, Diana waited until Wes got into the car. As she strapped on the seat belt, she turned to him. The heat in the car was stifling until he turned on the air conditioner. “What have you been dreaming, Wes?”

He sat for a moment, his hands resting on the steering wheel. “After college I entered the army, and I saw a lot of marriages go on the rocks. I saw friends who loved each other get torn apart by the long duty hours, the overseas time apart. The duty put incredible strains on a marriage. I decided I wasn’t going that way.”

He turned to her. “My foster parents had a good marriage, Diana. Growing up with them gave me a whole perspective on life. They loved each other deeply. They could never have children, and they were happy to have me. When I left for college, I was determined to have a marriage like theirs.”

“Not all marriages in the military break up, do they?”

“No, not all, but a high percentage do,” he said wearily. “What I wasn’t counting on was getting drafted by Delta Force right off the bat. It’s too high-powered an organization, Diana. The time you spend in training alone is enough to shatter any except the strongest marriage. I saw my fellow officers struggling to hold it together, and I knew I didn’t want that.” He picked up her hand and held it gently in his. “I wanted one marriage. I wanted forever. I didn’t want to lose the woman I fell in love with.”

Diana’s hand tingled. “You were afraid of love?”

“No. I wanted it. I’m human. I wanted to be able to settle down, go home at night, kiss the wife, hug the kids—all that stuff.” Wes gazed down at her work-worn hand—a hand that made his heart sing, made him want her all over again. He looked up at her. “I made a decision,” he told her heavily. “I knew then that love and marriage couldn’t work for me because of the demands and stresses of my job in Delta Force. The other thing I worried about was what if I got killed and left behind a wife and children?”

Diana nodded, seeing the roots of his logic. “Your mother gave you up and died,” she whispered, a catch in her voice. “You didn’t want to leave anyone behind, didn’t want them abandoned as you were abandoned.”

“That’s right,” Wes admitted softly. “I knew what it felt like to be alone. For so many years, Diana, I lived off an anger that fueled me. That’s partly why I agreed to join Delta Force—I was a living time bomb of rage. I had to work it off, work it out somehow.” His eyes grew sad. “I didn’t want my own children ever to have to suffer the kind of rage and hatred I felt for so many years toward my real mother and my situation.”

“You aren’t angry with her any longer, are you?”

He gave a sharp laugh and released Diana’s hand, leaning back against the seat. Staring out the window at the blue, cloudless sky, he said, “Not anymore. Ten years of aggression is enough to wring out any amount of bitterness and rage.”

“And that’s why you left the army? Delta Force?”

Wes rolled his head to the right and held her gaze. “When the anger had finally worked through me, I felt hollow. Empty. I woke up one morning in the B.O.Q. and wondered what the hell I was living for. I realized a lot that morning, Diana. I realized my mother had done the best she could for me under the circumstances. To this day, I wonder how she managed to give me up for adoption, because there is plenty of evidence that she did love me.” His mouth quirked. “When I was eighteen, my parents gave me a small box of letters my real mother had written to them. I still have them.”

Diana felt pain in her heart for him. She reached over and gently caressed his arm. She could feel the tension Wes still held over his painful childhood. “The fact she loved you enough to give you up tells me she had an incredible kind of courage.”

“Yeah,” he sighed, “she loved me more than she did herself. Figure that one out. She thought so little of herself that she let drugs run her life and kill her.”

“But she wanted a better, more positive life for you.”

“Yes.” Wes’s lips thinned. “So, once I realized all of this, I quit Delta Force. I had a lot of leave accrued, and I just wandered for about a year, all over the face of the earth. But everywhere I went, I felt empty. I drank a lot. I partied a lot. I tried to find out why I couldn’t
feel
anymore.” He tapped his gut. “I didn’t find an answer, so I came back stateside. That’s when one of my friends told me Morgan Trayhern of Perseus was hiring qualified mercenaries.” His mouth curved slightly. “I was hired within two weeks, after a lot of testing and snooping into my background. Trayhern doesn’t hire just anybody. He’s got to know his staff is trustworthy.”

“And you’ve been working for Perseus for how long?”

“A year.”

“Do you like the work?”

The corners of his mouth curved a little more. “It’s been okay. At least with Perseus there’s satisfaction in getting a mission accomplished. That was a new one for me. At Delta Force, we had a lot of scrubbed missions. We would train for months, even years, then go out on a possible mission only to have it scrubbed. It was frustrating. With Morgan’s company, I’m able to go in, do the job on my own terms, complete it and walk away from it.”

“But you didn’t want this mission, did you?”

Wes laughed as he picked up her hand and squeezed it. “No. But I’m awfully damn glad now that I took it.”

Her heart beat a little harder. “Do you understand the psychic gift I have now?”